Chasing Shadows
by Gandalf3213
Summary: Pretending to be a psychic finally caught up to him: a drug cartel kidnaps Shawn, telling him that if he doesn't use his psychic powers to tell them where a rival gang stashed their drugs, Gus would die. What can Shawn do? What can anyone do?
1. In Which Shawn is Kidnapped

****A/N: Still one of the best shows on television, but we can't help but wonder what it would be like with a little more grit. What if Shawn and Gus faced were a little more dangerous?

Warnings: Nothing too graphic. Just a lot of emotional stress for our heroes.

Dedication: To everyone back home in good ol' NJ. Being an ocean away makes us appreciate the comforts of home a lot more.

.***.

**Gus: **Shawn? What are you doing here?"

**Shawn: **I came here to save you. _**Tuesday the 17th**_

.***.

When Shawn woke up, he was in a white room tied to a chair. And this wasn't like the interrogation rooms at the SBPD, where he knew that _that_ stain had been caused by Lassie throwing his coffee against the wall in an attempt at intimidation, and behind _that_ window McNab was probably conforming to stereotypes and eating a donut.

No, this room was white in a way that wasn't clean or cheap. It was the absense of creativity, of thought. Shawn made a motion to get up out of the chair and couldn't break the ropes. It didn't matter, though, he would have fallen back down if he'd gotten up anyway. He was startled by his own lack of strength.

So he was stuck there, without anything to get clues off of. Only the white, white expanse of the room, and he thought he'd go insane. He _needed_ to look at details, to gather information, to formulate a plan...but the room was defying him.

He settled in for a long wait (and anyone will tell you that Shawn Spencer just doesn't _do_ long waits) and thought about the last time he'd woken up in a strange room alone.

It was after that case that took them down to the docklands. Shawn had gotten a lead and dragged Gus down there, and even though his oldest friend insisted on calling for backup they didn't actually wait for it (his father, Lassie, everyone chewed him out for it later..."backup only works if you wait for it." After this incident, Shawn waited, but not because of their words.) They went in and found the suspects just where they thought they would. In a make-shift meth lab.

Here's the thing about meth labs: they're unstable. Especially the highly illegal kind (here, Gus would point out that meth labs were always highly illegal, but Gus wasn't here.)

Unstable things have a tendancy to blow up.

He and Gus were thrown in opposite directions: Shawn towards the door, Gus...not. Shawn staggered to his feet, coughing, yelling, and that's when the SBPD decided to show up, of course, and Shawn remembered thinking vaguely that if Gus's mother-hen tendancies hadn't called them there, the mushroom cloud might have.

"Shawn!" Juliet ran to him and Shawn swayed unsteadily, blinking blood out of his eyes. The heat of the fire was prickling his skin, but somehow he didn't feel the pain. "Come on! We need to go!"

"Gus!" Shawn threw off Juliet's desperate grip, ignored Lassie's shout of "Spencer!" and ran back into the flames.

He was dragged out by Lassie and McNab, who each took an arm to haul him back. He struggled against them, kicking, screaming as he'd never screamed in his life. "Gus!" It was a desperate shout, ending in an almost-sob.

"You can't help him!" It was Lassie who took him by the shoulders, McNab melting off somewhere else. It was Lassie who shook him until Shawn raised his head, blinked against the too-bright blaze of the inferno. He was expecting to see anger and only saw sadness and regret written all across Detective Carlton Lassiter's face. "I'm so sorry, Shawn."

He passed out then, and Lassie managed to catch him before he hit the ground. Later, Shawn would say he passed out not from the deep cut on his leg or the head wound or the stress but out of sheer amazement that Lassie had called him Shawn.

When he woke up in the hospital room - which had been white, sure, but not white like this mind-numbing place - when he woke up in the hospital room alone it was like that moment when he'd been thrown back by the explosion and the wind had been knocked out of him. For a handful of heartbeats he couldn't breathe, could only sit there and think over and over _Gus is dead because of me_.

And then, like his subconsciousness manifesting itself into undeniable truth: there was Gus, wheeled in by his father, looking burned and hurt but mostly fondly aggravated. "I told you not waiting for back up was a bad idea." And all Shawn could do was grin like and idiot, his hand flopping on the bed for purchase until Gus grabbed it with his own, squeezed once. _I'm alive. We're alive. _

As long as that was true, then Shawn could survive anything.

Even a completely white room. When the door finally opened (minutes/hours/days) later, Shawn realized why that memory had come to him so suddenly. It wasn't the whiteness of the room, the sparse decorations. It was the person who'd been with him right before he was in this room.

"Where's Gus?" He was proud of his voice, defiant and not at all scared, the question shot like a bullet at the man who entered the room. He looked like he could have easily played Agent Smith in the Matrix movies, and if Shawn had had his side kick to rollt he punch line off of, he probably would have said something to that effect. Instead, he shrank back from the gun in the man's hand, thinking that this was the level of intimidation Lassie always hoped to be able to give off.

The man smiled, that crooked sneer villians so often assumed. "I told Delgado your little friend would be the perfect leverage. He just wanted to go for the vague threats of bodily harm, but I know your type Spencer." Shawn shouldn't have been surprised that the man knew his name, and he wasn't, not really. More revolted, and his name coming out of that sneering mouth made tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"Dad's a cop. You rebelled for a little while, but eventually you got into the crime-fighting buisness yourself. You would be noble, right? Not at all presuaded if we told you we'd kill you if you don't cooperate."

Shawn found himself staring at the gun. He really hated guns, even if he could shoot them with no problem. Long ago, his father had taught him to respect the power of a gun. How one tiny squeeze could end another human's life.

The villian was still monologuing, which Shawn would have made fun of if he wasn't so damn scared. "So you need a better reason to break the law for us. And I got a good reason: you do what we want, your friend won't die."

Why was it that good guys always had to play by the rules and the bad guys could break them? You don't bring other people into conflicts. You don't kill civilians. This was such a basic moral code that for a moment Shawn was stunned. And then he started cursing through his teeth, too angry and scared and confused by this whole situation for his voice to be any more than a hiss. Every time he tried to speak normally, he found a lump caught in his throat. The kind you get when you're desperately trying not to cry.

Agent Smith let him rage, stood there impassively, gun held in a slack hand, and waited until Shawn had finished yelling, until he'd struggled so much against the ropes that his wrists were bleeding. Then all at once Shawn went limp, knowing that he had no choice. He would do anything necessary to make sure Gus didn't die.

So he finally raised his eyes to meet the cold, calculating ones of Agent Smith and murmured, "What do I have to do?"

**.***.**

**that was just a little taster. another chapter should be up fairly quickly, where we'll actually pick up the thread of the story. it's not a nice story, but there's a lot of love. ya'll know what i'm talking about.**

**questions, comments, gripes or concerns...just drop us a line.**


	2. In Which Gus is Still Kidnapped

Warnings: Mentions of off-screen violence. And a couple of dismembered body parts.

.***.

****Gus**: **We're in a hostage situation, Shawn. You don't get that?

****Shawn**:** I do get it. What I don't get is the bulletproof vest over the shirt. What is that? **Gus Walks Into a Bank**

.***.

They knocked him out again and he woke up in Psych. It was early Friday morning, and by his recollection they'd been snatched from the very same office almost exactly twenty-four hours before. It was like nothing had happened. Except Gus was missing.

Have you ever missed a step on a staircase in your own house? You're surprised for that instant, and a little afraid of falling, but after you get over being surprised and scared, you're baffled that you were so confused by something so familiar.

That's what being without Gus was like. Like missing something that should be there.

For a moment Shawn sat on the couch, looking absently at his wrists. They were torn, bruised, and probably in need of bandages. He'd never been good at that first aid stuff, though. Gus was good enough for the both of them, and he was never very far from Gus.

It occured to him that the bruises were the only evidence of his ordeal. His kidnappers, that goddamned drug cartel, had left no trace, only warnings that rang out over and over in Shawn's head, a song he couldn't shake off. You have two days, psychic wonder. Make them count, or you're friend's going to die.

Yeah, he got that loud and clear. Except for the small problem that he wasn't psychic.

His father had come close to this possibility once, when Shawn barged into the house on a Sunday morning, pretending he'd forgotten a sweatshirt but really there because he knew his father would make him an omelet, which he'd been craving. Anyway, over omelets Henry Spencer had started the conversation by saying, "you know this psychic thing isn't going to end well, Shawn. And I'm not even talking about personal trust issues here. If you keep telling newspapers you're psychic, the government's going to pick you up and lock you in a lab until they find out what makes you tic."

To which Shawn had responded with something like, "I thought I was the conspiracy theorist, dad! You're walking all over my gig!"

And one of those newspaper articles touting his psychic abilities did lead to a white room, to people who knew exactly what made him tic. Except they weren't the government, just run-of-the-mill drug smugglers who'd had their stash stolen by a rival gang, and they didn't know where they'd hidden it.

Back in that white room, Agent Smith had told him, using the gun to gesticulate, "We have to put the forty-eight hour window on you. It's definately going to be out of the country by then, and we need it back."

"Why not just intimidate one of their members?" Shawn had asked, bewildered. "I'm sure that gun would go a long way towards making someone talk."

Agent Smith smirked at that, "I was curious to see how good your powers were. If you were actually psychic. We could have a very lucrative partnership if you are."

"I think you threatening to kill my current partner might put a damper on our relationship." Shawn had said, and Agent Smith actually laughed at that. He wasn't really a Smith at all, when Shawn looked close (and Shawn couldn't help but look close.) More of a Martinez or a Lopez.

Shawn decided he couldn't do much about his hands and gathered up all his strength to push himself off the couch. He was tired - being unconscious wasn't the same as being asleep - and had had two blows to the head in twenty-four hours. But he wasn't exhausted. He was too frantic.

So he took his coat off the back of the chair where it had been lying all day and made sure the sleeves covered his wrists. Then he took the Blueberry and drove it straight to the police station, hoping to God they could help them.

Agent Smith/Martinez/Lopez had mentioned the police very specifically. "We know you work close with them, and you're dad's hanging around there, too. Don't worry, we don't care if you tell them about this. In fact, we prefer it." He caught Shawn's look of surprise and laughed meanly. "You were expecting more threats against your friend if you involved the good old SBPD, right? You can tell them everything, psychic. Just don't tell them where the drugs are, and let us get to them first,_ comprende_? If you don't find the drugs, or they're not where you say they are, or the police are there to arrest us, then your friend dies. But you can tell them everything else. Anything you want."

Drug cartels could say things like that when they held all the cards.

He must have looked a sight, bursting into the Santa Barbara Police Station with his eyes wide and wild, looking around for Juliet or his father or Lassie, anyone who could help him. He was so focused on looking for them that he barelled right into Buzz McNab.

"Hey Shawn!" McNab said, smiling picking Shawn up from the floor where he'd landed hard. Buzz didn't seem fazed at all by the collision. "In a hurry? You and Gus have a case?" He looked around, registering then that Gus wasn't at Shawn's shoulder like always. "Where's Gus?"

"Where's Lassie?" Shawn asked, ignoring all the questions Buzz had posed to him.

McNab jerked a thumb towards Vick's office. "I'd watch out though, Shawn. He's pretty pissed that you're having your mail sent here now."

If Shawn had been thinking straight, he would have asked about the mail, but now he really understood the term out of your mind. Isn't that what Gus always said? And now Shawn could hear him even as he hurried towards the Chief's office: "You must be out of your damn mind, Shawn."

If those words had ever been true, they were true now. He felt unhinged, unanchored without the calming presence of Gus by his side. Which is probably why he literally ran into Lassiter as the older man was walking out of the chief's office.

"Spencer!" Lassie growled, the same way he always did. He was holding a small box and held it out to Shawn, pinching it between his fingers like he didn't want to be contaminated. "This is a police station, not your own personal mail service."

Shawn reached for the box and Lassie pulled it further away. Shawn swiped at it without thinking, and that's when Lassiter put down the box, depositing onto a nearby desk and grabbing Shawn's arm.

"Wha - Lassie!" Shawn yelped, trying to pull his arm free, but it was too late.

Lassie stared at the bruises and cuts uncomprehendingly, then looked around, registering for the first time Gus's absence, and, more worryingly, the near-panicked expression written all over Shawn's face. "Alright, Spencer. What happened?"

Three minutes later they were in the chief's office. Shawn was flanked on either side by his father and Juliet, with Lassie and the chief staring him down from the other side of the table. Shawn recounted everything he knew, his voice getting higher and more desperate as he went on. He could see no happy ending for this story.

"I don't get it." Juliet said, holding Shawn's hand. "You know Gus so well, shouldn't you be able to sense him?"

Shawn actually smiled at that, though of course why would anyone at the police department think otherwise? He presented himself as a psychic who could basically see things at will. He was glad, though, that his father saved him the trouble of answering.

"There's no way he'd be able to see anything right now, Detective. He's too emotionally involved." Juliet nodded sympathetically and Shawn shot his father a grateful glance. Very rarely did Henry Spencer outright lie for his son, and the fact that he was doing it now meant he thought there was a reason for Shawn to preserve his cover- that he would be working with the police department again in the future. That they would get Gus back.

"So we should think of non-psychic ways to either locate Mr. Guster or these stolen drugs," Vick said, looking at each of them. "Any ideas?"

"What's in the package, Shawn?" Juliet asked, pointing to the box that had been sitting on Shawn's lap through the whole story.

"No idea." Shawn had completely forgotten the box was there at all, but now the curiosity that Gus always swore would actually kill them, like it had killed the cat, was piqued. And satisfaction brought that ol' cat back, right? So he opened the box.

It was a finger, sitting on top of day-old newspaper. A long, brown finger that, no more than twenty-four hours before, had definately been on the right hand of Burton Guster.

Shawn thrust the box away from him and worked very hard not to be sick. And while he couldn't stand Juliet's hand on his arm, he found he didn't mind in the least when his father rubbed circles on his back, like he used to do when Shawn, as a child, would find himself crawling onto his father's lap for the comfort the closeness brought.

"Get it out of here, Lassiter." Henry growled, because if he didn't say something the thing stuck in his throat would burst out in a yell, or a hard punch at a wall. Was this really happening? Gus kidnapped as colatroral so Shawn could work voodoo magic he didn't really have? Could this possibly be real life?

Karen Vick was trying to remain unmoved, but she found herself blinking and swallowing hard before letting out a deep breath. She was still in charge after all, the big boss who got to make all the big decisions. "Do we know that's Gus's finger, Shawn?"

"It's his, of course it's his." Shawn muttered. He was rubbing his temples, small circles like the one his father was still rubbiing onto his back. He couldn't look at the chief, because the chief was near that finger, and he certainly couldn't look at that.

"It could just be a bluff though, right?" Juliet said, cheering up a little at the thought. "Right, Shawn? Did you try calling him? Have you actually spoken to Gus since this whole thing began?"

"I think you're kind of missing the point of 'kidnapped,' O'Hara." Lassiter muttered. He'd put the box with the finger behind his back. He'd bring it down to Woody later.

"It's nine in the morning. He could just be at home, or at Psych!" Juliet was pitiably excited, and Shawn felt a little better at the suggestion that things might not be as bad as they seemed.

"I guess I could try." He slipped his hand into his pocket and reallized he'd forgotten his phone somewhere between getting kidnapped himself and getting to the police station.

"You should probably use the station phone anyway," Vick said kindly. "Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky."

Five minute later they were in front of a phone. Lassie was stooping below his station to operate the location equipment, because they didn't want the rest of the department in on this, not yet. If they could reach Gus on his phone, then the finger was a part of another investigation. If they couldn't...well, then it might be time to call in the big guns.

Everyone, all five standing around anxiously, was surprised when the phone was answered on the sixth ring and Gus's strained voice came through the other end. "Shawn?"

"Hey buddy." The relief in Shawn's voice was heartbreaking, "Where are you? Are you alright?"

"I'm - I'm okay." There were voices in the background, voices that sounded cruel even over the phone. "Could use a Band-Aid, though."

"Yeah, I sensed you got a papercut or something." Shawn sucked in a breath, looked up at the cieling and blinked back tears. He wouldn't cry. He could be relieved that Gus was alive and well enough to make jokes, but he couldn't cry in front of Lassiter. "You know, this is a little bit too much like _Along Came a Spider_ for my taste."

"That would make me Brittney Wilcox, and you Carl." Gus said, and that made Shawn do a double-take. Along Came a Spider was something he'd watched with Gus, and had mentioned it so that Gus would say that, in a perfect world, he, Gus, would be Morgan Freeman. Not...Brittney Wilcox...

There was the sound of a phone being ripped away, and then the unmistakable groans that come when you're being beat up and don't want to make a fuss about it. "You got our little gift, Spencer?" That was Agent Martinez or Lopez, from The White Room.

"Leave Gus out of this!" Shawn said, and he didn't care that he was begging. You try not sounding scared out of your mind when your friend's finger is in a box behind Lassie's back.

"No can do, buckaroo." The voice was sing-song, happily lilting. "And I know the cops are trying to track this, so I gotta hang up now. You know how to reach us, though, once you know where those drugs are. Soon we'll run out of fingers to cut off."

A click, and the line when dead, but not before half a truly horrible scream made it into the room. Lassie threw down the headphones he was wearing. "Damnit! We were ten seconds away from getting a fix on their position!"

"It's alright, Lassie." Shawn said, his voice low and eerily calm. "This is Gus we're talking about. Of course he gave us a clue."

"What are you talking about, Shawn?" Juliet asked, "He barely had time to say anything."

"He said enough." Shawn said, pushing himself away from the table, "I know where to find him."

**.***.**

**now, do you all know where he is? i like to think that gus would have back-up plans for the back-up plans. he would definitely be able to get a message to shawn. and this is a pretty good hint.**

**questions? comments? gripes? concerns?**


	3. In Which They Might Have a Plan

****Gus**: **Are you crazy?

****Shawn**:** I wouldn't say crazy. Maybe an eccentric who looks good in jeans...

.***.

Gus couldn't believe his good fortune.

Yes, his good fortune. He was tied to a chair and had been turned into a black version of nine-fingered Frodo, but at least he knew where he was. There were very few places in and around Santa Barbara that a case hadn't led them, and this abandoned lot hadn't been so abandoned around Christmastime. So he was bruised and bleeding and in pain (so much pain) but at least he could identify the dingy warehouse.

See, hanging around Shawn was starting to rub off on him.

And when Shawn finally did call, as Gus knew he would if he'd been released as his captors promised he had, Gus willed his best friend to give him an opportunity. And Shawn did, as he normally did, because the two had been around each other for so long that they always operated on the same wavelength. So Gus slipped in his clue.

Shawn would get it - Shawn was smarter than all of them, realy. Should have gone to college with that brain. Could have been a leginatmate CSI guy instead of playing up the scam. Gus remembered the day so well, the day Shawn decided not to go to college, not to join the police force, just to get on his bike and keep going. He'd come to Gus's house and hugged him. Gus had thought he was dying.

Once, perhaps a year ago, they had gone for a walk on the boardwalk, waiting for another case. It was twilight, and they'd had the wooden slats almost entirely to themselves.

Shawn had been poking fun at Gus's lack of love life again, after Gus made the mistake of telling him about the witch he'd tried to spend a pleasant evening with. Gus remembered throwing his cone to the seagulls and rounding on his friend. "It's not funny, Shawn. I'm seriously going to end up alone."

"Well, not completely alone. You'll always have me." Shawn gave him a fond look that always reminded him of a dopey dog he'd had as a kid. Then the look changed, became troubled and serious. "My biggest fear is ending up in some lab in Rowell being poked at for the rest of my life."

"Roswell is for aliens," Gus said, "And you can always just stop lying." Shawn had looked offended and launched into a different subject, but not before Gus realized that Shawn was actually, seriously, really worried about beiing snatched by the FBI or CIA or whoever he thought would take him away.

And from that day on Shawn's greatest fear became Gus's, too. Isn't that what having a best friend really is? Their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Their fears are your fears.

Gus thought about the plan the drug lords around him had been gloating about all day. They'd thought it was fool-proof, knocking out Shawn and Gus, dragging them to very different parts of the city, putting Shawn in a room with absolutely no distinctive features...

That's what made Gus think of that time on the boardwalk. How terrified Shawn must have been, to wake up to his worst nightmare...in a white room, confronted by a man in a suit. Alone. The rest of his life a long string of days where scientists tried to find out the secret behind his non-existent psychic abilities, not taking his denial of them for an answer.

Just before the phone call, when Gus was finally able to think beyond the terrible pain in his hand (which had bled so much that Gus, always a bit of a hypochondriac, began to think he was dying) he'd asked what seemed to be the leader a question they appeared to have not thought of. "Look, Shawn's psychic -" no sense in blowing the game now "-and we've been best friends since we were about four. Why wouldn't he just use his psychic powers to find me instead of your drugs?"

"We'll kill him." One of the henchmen said after a long pause. The other men nodded, looking pleased with this answer. "Or we'll kill you."

"Leverage is always a good thing." Another one said, as if this was a rule all children learn in school.

For good measure, the one closest to Gus gave him a good punch to the face, instantly making his lip swell.

When Shawn finally did call, he did his best to sound okay. When he dropped the hint, and one of the brighter men guessed it was a hint, he did his best not to make any noise as they soundly beat the breath out of his body.

After all, when you have a best friend, their pain is your pain. And Gus didn't want to heap any more pain on Shawn Spencer. Not when he desperately needed his friend to come up with a plan.

.***.

"So what's the plan?" Shawn asked once he finished explaining, twice, how he knew where Gus was. (Lassie had pointed out that Gus might be too injured to actually have accurate information, and Juliet hit him on the arm, hard, because Shawn had suddenly gone pale and scared at the thought. After that, everyone just assumed Gus was safe, even if it was his finger sitting in a box between them.)

But Shawn's question made everyone stop. Shawn never asked for advice, and if it was given he never followed it. The only person who could get him to do anything was the very person whose absense was so noticable. To have a suddenly complacent Shawn accentuated the situation, made it somehow worse.

"Well, it looks like we have two options." Henry said, pushing himself out of the chair and pacing the room, but not before clapping his son on the shoulder. He'd imagined this scenario, with Shawn being the one missing, often enough in the years since the boys started running around with the SBPD, and sometimes laughed at his younger self who desperately wanted a son in law enforcement. The risks Shawn took sometimes literally kept him up at night. What would he do if, God forbid, Shawn was the one in Gus's position, and it was his son's finger on the table in front of him? What mountains would he move to make sure his child was alive and safe? And shouldn't he move those same mountains for the man who had been a boy that had sat at his dinner table and been a rock for Shawn during the divorce? Being a parent was keeping your kid safe at all costs, but being a human being was keeping everyone else's kid safe, too.

Everyone was looking at Henry, who was so caught up in thought that he'd left the room silent for five seconds...ten... "Two options," he repeated, trying to find that train of thought that seemed to have already left the station. "We know where Gus is. We can get him."

"They'll kill him." The pain in Shawn's voice made Henry wince at the rawness of it.

"We'll do it fast," Lassiter said, completely serious. "I've heard of it working for other departments. If we have the right preperation and the element of surprise -"

"No." Shawn said, "If it were me dad, you wouldn't even be listening to this. I'm being you for Gus. No. He's not dying. He's not getting close to dying." He stopped, looked around, knocked on wood because Gus was trying to teach him when it was appropriate to do that sort of thing. Shawn usually just did it whenever he felt like he needed some extra luck, and right now they needed luck more than ever. "What's the other option?"

"Do what they want. Find the drugs. Lead it to them. Have a responsible and trustworthy middle-man to keep Gus safe after the deal goes down. SBPD won't go after them," he looked at Lassie, daring him to say something to upset his son again, "we'll get other departments. Anyone else. We'll make it safe."

"There's so much that could go wrong." Shawn said, sounding young and afraid, and suddenly Henry had a vision of an eight-year-old who'd have nightmares and crawl onto his daddy's side of the bed.

Juliet put her arm around Shawn's neck and he let her, leaning into the embrace. "We'll get him back, Shawn. We'll make this work." She was thinking about the _what-ifs _too, except she wasn't imagining her life without Shawn (when did life without the psychic detective become so unimaginable that she literally could not bring herself to think about it? When had she started to allow herself to plan her life around this man?) No, she was thinking the worst-case-scenario what-ifs that cops are so liable to think about...

...What if Gus died? What if they tried their best and it wasn't good enough and Gus died? She couldn't imagine her life without Shawn, but she really couldn't imagine Shawn without Gus. Sometimes, if Lassie was in one of his spiteful moods, he'd call them an old married couple, but even that wasn't right. They knew how to press each other's buttons, sure but they also helped each other without thinking about, surprised each other, knew each other so well that Juliet wasn't entirely sure if one could exist without the other. People liked to toss around the term 'best friend.' _Oh, she's my best friend. We do everything together. _But Juliet hadn't been using that term, not since she met Shawn and Gus.

Shawn looked up at her and managed one of those quick not-smiles that people flash sometimes when they want to make the other person feel better. "Yeah, Jules. If our lives were a tv show I'm pretty sure it'd be a comedy."

"You do know that most comedies end in weddings." Lassiter literally hit his forehead with the palm of his hand after he said that. Why was he always setting Spencer up for jokes?

But he didn't take one this time, just sat there thoughtfully. "It would just be really great if this didn't end like Hamlet. Gus gave me the summary of it Senior year and I'm pretty sure everyone dies at the end." He looked around at then all, smiling a smile that looked so sad it broke even Lassiter's heart. "It would be really great if our lives turned out like a comedy, guys. Hamlet was a major downer."

**.***.**

**we're going absolutely crazy, because our school decided to block the website we were using to watch netflix here in jolly old england. so now we have no psych. this is very, very sad for us.**

**good for you all, though. no psych for us means more psych stories for you.**


	4. In Which Shawn Goes The Other Way

"My single greatest fear used to be that something would happen to _me_. Second greatest fear was that something would happen to Gus." _**Shawn Spencer**_

.***.

Shawn wasn't thinking clearly. That is the only reason he could give for wandering into the warehouse alone instead of going along with the rather good plan Lassie and the team were working on: cooperate with kidnappers, and everything would be fine.

And maybe if they'd done it that way everything would have worked out better. Maybe it would have worked out worse. The fact of the matter is that Shawn Spencer wasn't really known for waiting, and so he slipped away from Juliet and his father long enough to get that gun and go down to where he hoped to God Gus was.

He wasn't thinking. Or, more accurately, he wasn't thinking about his actions and the disasterous consequences they could have. He was thinking about being four years old, and playing cops and robbers, and four-year-old Gus spouting something he'd heard his father mutter to Shawn's father the previous afternoon when he'd come to pick his boy up, "How come the black man got to be the robber?" Neither of them really understood what that meant, beyond the obvious fact that Shawn's skin was so pasty white it burned when the sky was covered with clouds and Gus's was brown like the wet dirt they liked to dig up after the rain. But they laughed anyway, pushing each other to the ground and rolling in the mud until they were both black and in desperate need of baths.

He was thinking about when they were twelve, and he and Gus had been riding their bikes down to the lake and had seen a bag come flying out of a car. Their insatiable curiosity had led them to open the bag to reveal two tiny kittens, eyes not even open yet, shockingly, terribly still at the bottom of the bag. They'd taken them back to Shawn's father, riding fasts with hands cupped to chests, but the poor things were already dead. They were buried near the fence in the backyard. They were the first dead things that Shawn wished he had the power to bring back to life.

He was thinking about when they were eighteen, and Gus was gaping at him. "But...you got accepted to three schools, Shawn! Why are you throwing that away?" And Shawn hadn't been able to find the words to tell Gus that he never liked school, that he needed to be free from the confines of life for a while. He'd promised he'd call Gus and hadn't, because leaving his best friend was ten times harder than leaving the father he'd grown to hate. So he'd sent postcards instead, from Wyoming and Wisconsin and New Jersey, hoping that was enough.

(he was almost at the warehouse now, his feet moving on autopilot, his body tense and thinking about nothing and everything and oh-my-God they'd actually cut off Gus's finger. who did that in real life?)

He was thinking about when they were twenty-two and had shown up at Gus's college graduation. With long hair and a motorcycle all the girls were flocking to him, ready for one last crazy night. Gus came over because he was wondering who this guy was, telling all his friends they were brothers. He'd turned a corner, saw Shawn, and stopped moving. Shawn looked at him over the head of a blond, and Gus had smiled, shook his head. He could never resist Shawn's antics. the four years apart were insignificant after that.

(he shouldered open the door to the warehouse, the gun heavy in his hand. guns were heavy. no one really said that. he heard something upstairs like screams and some part of him sent off alarm bells. this vigilante stuff was stupid! didn't Batman's girlfriend die in the last movie? Gus could die, too! but he went up the stairs anyway.)

He was thinking of all the times he'd hurt Gus. When they were in elementary school and playing with the plastic blasters they'd gotten for Christmas and Shawn had flailed his arm too hard and caught Gus in the lip. When they were in middle school and Gus had tried to step in while Shawn was antagonizing a bully and ended up being the center of the steroid-popping kid's rage instead. When Shawn had gotten into his first car accident and Gus had been his wingman like always. Shawn had been fine, had turned his head to see Gus leaning against the dashboard, blood everywhere. And all those times on cases: pulled muscles and small cuts and being blasted into the air and nearly being killed, nearly being killed, nearly being killed.

(he wasn't thinking when he followed the noise, when he opened the door. a part of him had thought that maybe he would hesitate. he'd never shot a person before. but then he saw the guy carving something into Gus's back and Gus was writhing, trying to get away, and he didn't even hesitate a little. he shot them all through the forehead. one-two-three-four-five-six. the last one was dead before anyone really knew what was happening.)

He was thinking that Gus needed to be saved, and Shawn needed to do the saving. Because that's what best friends were for.

.***.

Shawn called his father after he'd untied Gus and laid him out on the ground. Shawn's voice was eerily calm, even while every fibre in his body was screaming, screaming _there's so much blood_. "Dad? It's all good. I killed them. Gus and I are safe. You should probably get everyone down here."

That was all the facts anyone really needed. Shawn took off his coat and draped it over Gus's shivering body, hiding all the marks a knife had made in his arm, his stomach, his back. SHAWN SHAWN SHAWN. A brand. Shawn's own name carved and cut into Gus's skin. When had solving crimes and catching bad guys become so dangerous?

"I'm so sorry buddy," Shawn said, pulling Gus's head into his lap and holding on, willing strength and warmth into his apparently dying friend. It was only when something mingled with all the blood that Shawn realized he was crying rivers of tears, oceans of them, falling thick and fast. His shirt was already drenched. He must have been crying for a while. Lassie's head would explode when he realized Shawn made six clean kills in a row while crying.

Six. Clean. Kills.

He shouldn't move newly-nine-fingered Gus. He shouldn't drag his body out of the room. He shouldn't do anything but stay there and try to keep Gus breathing but he needed out. The dead eyes were staring at him.

"Hey buddy, we're going to go outside to the landing, okay? You don't want to be in here anymore." Gus gripped his arm and locked eyes with him and nodded. Gus understood, because he always understood.

"You know, you should probably stop getting kidnapped. When the bards write their songs about me -"

"Bards don't write songs anymore, Shawn." Gus gasped, his voice a whisper, but Shawn grinned anyway. "I don't think bards even exist anymore."

"That's so not the point. When the bards write songs about me, you're going to end up being the damsel in distress, and I'm not going to bother to point out you're more the Lando Calrission type."

"I'm at least Han Solo." Gus said, then sucked in a breath as his body was jostled.

"Just another three feet. I can't be around dead people. They give me the heebie-jeebies."

"Then you probably shouldn't have created six dead people, Shawn." But this wasn't a rebuke, more of a fond exasperation. "I"m going to pass out now."

"Long as you don't die."

"Trying not to." Gus closed his eyes and Shawn slammed the door shut behind him. He settled on the floor and put Gus's head back on his lap. The jacket had slipped in the move and he could see the brands again. SHAWN SHAWN SHAWN. Later, he'd ask Gus what he'd done to deserve them.

Sirens downstairs. Shawn would have a lot of explaining to do. Maybe he'd go to jail. At this point he didn't even care. Gus wasn't being tortured anymore. That was enough for him.

"Thanks for saving me, Shawn." Gus mumbled, his voice a breath, barely there.

Shawn smiled, "Anytime buddy. You just keep that heart beating."

But that was too much for Gus, whose heart stopped beating two and a half minutes later and Shawn's world collapsed around him again.

**.***.**

**so that just took a turn out to left field. we were re-watching and pilot and there's that one scene where shawn shoots the target perfectly and we were like, "well, he'd be pretty pissed they messed with gus, and he doesn't really think things through," so we decided to give him a gun and see what happened. and this happened.**

**what shawn wasn't thinking about were things like _law_ and _procedure_ and the fact that a gang that imports drugs probably has more than six people in it. jussaying.**

**anyway, please review.**


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